


Quick Escapes

by steadfastest



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (for like two minutes), Coffee Shops, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Kissing, M/M, disguises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-28 20:36:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15057329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steadfastest/pseuds/steadfastest
Summary: Harry’s in disguise. He’s no one. So why is Draco Malfoy trying to kiss him?





	Quick Escapes

It feels good, on occasion, to shed the fame and go out in disguise. He's no master of the glamour, but it doesn't take much to elongate his nose, re-tint his skin, erase the scar. In nondescript robes and carrying a bestseller from Flourish and Blotts, Harry could be anyone. He can even sit right inside the front window of Bitterberry’s, where the sun falls on the page and the world drifts by in colorful flashes down the Alley, alone with a purslane espresso and a distractingly flaky croissant, without anyone bothering him. It's a lovely escape.

Until today.

A hand interposes itself between the book and Harry's eyes.

Harry looks up from the pale, long-fingered hand, and into—

Merlin. 

Up into the paler, icy-eyed face of Draco Malfoy.

Harry just catches himself from exclaiming “Malfoy!” He's in disguise. Malfoy can't know him.

‘Excuse me,” Malfoy says urgently, bending his long body over the tiny table to speak to Harry very close. “In 20 seconds, I'm going to lean toward you and you're going to kiss me like you're mad for me. Okay?”

Malfoy looks panicked; he glances past Harry, quickly, out the cafe's many-paned front window, and back to Harry's face. 

Harry doesn't know. He doesn't know. He knows Malfoy; he knows _he_ can't trust this guy, no matter how many years have passed since Hogwarts—and yet, he's not Harry right now, he's a stranger, with whom Malfoy can have no possible quarrel. And the vacant horror in the eyes reminds Harry too much of a look he saw there long ago, when Malfoy was a boy under Voldemort's control—it's how he looks when he's fighting with all he's got to stop himself doing the wrong thing.

This time, Harry's not watching from afar. He's right here. He has it in him to stop it.

Harry nods. In the disguise, his voice comes out smoother and higher than usual. “Okay.”

“Three,” Malfoy says, leaning closer. “Two.”

Then Malfoy's hand is on the back of his head and Harry's lifting partway out of his seat to meet him. 

It's a sudden and hard kiss. As Malfoy's lips press against him, Harry is suffused with Malfoy's smell—a rich, cultured, mannerly sort of smell of the purest soaps and potions overlaying the deeper, warmer smells of a human body. Harry pushes up into him, into Malfoy, and feels his glamoured hair—a little curlier, a little shorter—flatten under the tightening of Malfoy's gentle hand.

“You're good at this,” Malfoy murmurs against his lips. “Mind a little more?”

In answer, Harry licks the tip of his coffee-tasting tongue against the airy sweetness of Malfoy's upper lip. 

“Mmm,” Malfoy says, and kisses back, letting Harry tongue enter his mouth, and, briefly, seek his own.

It's a bit much for a cafe window in the middle of a busy morning, but if it's what Malfoy needs, Harry will do it. Somehow his palm is on Malfoy’s chest, just below the throat, pressing up so that the thumb slides behind the slender tie to lodge in the dip of the clavicle. Malfoy leans his weight against Harry’s hand, neck lengthening to let Harry kiss him deeper.

Harry is not sure why his stomach is tingling, as if he’s nervous, when he sits back down. He lets one hand slide to his wand, just in case. He still doesn't know what Malfoy's evading.

“Gods, I've missed you,” Malfoy declares, just on the edge of too loudly for a private conversation, as he thumps elegantly backward into chair opposite Harry's. 

That's when Harry notices the photographer outside the window.

“Eyes on me!” Malfoy hisses. His face has regained its color, Harry observes. Louder, Malfoy says, “It's been too long.”

Taking Harry's available hand—the hand that was, inexplicably, wrapped around Malfoy's tie, that's now slid uselessly down to the table—in both of his, Malfoy brings his head near Harry's over the little table. Under the table, Harry’s other hand clenches on his wand. Malfoy sees.

Humor glints in his gray-glass eyes. “You can put it away. No one is in danger. Not that sort.”

Harry stares him down from below his heavy brows—which he knows are particularly impressive in this get-up, dark and fierce—and Malfoy has the discourtesy to look even sharper and more amused. 

“My parents had me betrothed, quite young, to a respectable pureblood girl. I'm bound by honor not to break it off so long as she doesn't, but as the day draws ever nearer, I thought I'd better accelerate our demise.” He caresses Harry's hand and murmurs, “Can you please look a bit less like a gaping eel and more as though I'm the font of your greatest passions?”

Behind the photographer, who is continuing to snap shots through the window, a small party watches in an array of attitudes. An older couple are glowering at them through the window; at their side, a woman about Harry's own age is observing with great curiosity, a twinkle in her gaze.

“Don't look at _them_ ,” hisses Malfoy. “Font of your passions? ingot in your cauldron? apple of your eye?”

Harry tries to speak, but the words stick. Pocketing his wand, he clears his throat, resolutely avoiding another glance out the leaded glass. “Is that Astoria Greengrass?”

“A lovely woman.”

“But you'd rather not marry her because—”

“I'm not terrifically interested in women.”

“Lovely or not.”

“Right.” Harry shivers at the brush of Malfoy's lips to his knuckles—or is it at the low reverberation of Malfoy's voice?

“And you can't just say it?”

“More effective this way, I suspect. Astoria will be tickled, and her parents will be be insulted enough to let her end it. At the infidelity, if not the homosexuality. Or both.” His long, fine fingertips crawl up Harry's sleeve to his chin and brush into the scruff there—too long to be stubble, too short to be a beard. “This isn't bad on you.”

Harry shakes his head, perplexed and oddly pleased to have been of service. Oddly pleased to have Malfoy's hand still on his jaw, though through the window Harry is certain the Greengrasses and photographer have gone. “Thanks,” Harry says.

“I wouldn't let it grow much longer, though,” Malfoy advises, eyeing him critically. “At least, not so long as you're sporting these dreadful curls.”

Harry feels a flash of indignation on behalf of the dreadful curls, which, even if they were just part of the glamour, Malfoy had willingly twisted his fingers into just minutes ago. “Thanks again,” he says, this time with a bit of an edge.

“My deepest thanks, to you, for the assistance,” Malfoy says blithely. “The photos should be top-notch. Look for us in the _Prophet_!”

“That wasn't—” Harry recognizes the _Prophet_ photographers; he spends plenty of time dodging them.

“No, just an unscrupulous free-lancer I hired for the engagement shoot.”

“ _You_ hired. So... you _planned_ this?”

“Obviously.”

“Then why rush in at me? Why not arrange with another man in advance?”

“Two birds, one stone,” Malfoy says. “With more time to think, you might have said no.” He tweaks one of the curls over Harry's ear. “Nice to know I can rely on you in a bind, Potter.”

Harry feels as though this ought to be more of a surprise. Yes, his heart hiccups at hearing his name, but just the once. If he didn't _expect_ Malfoy’s recognition, at least, it seems, he didn't fear it. “You know it's me.”

“Potter,” Malfoy says, leaning in, bright lips and pale eyes and a low hint of scorn that warms Harry's ribcage. “I'd know you anywhere.”

While Harry's taking this in, Malfoy taps his wand to the tabletop, casting a _Tempus_. “Ten-ten already!” His chair scritches on the floor as he pushes back to stand. “I beg you excuse me. There's a very important engagement photoshoot to which I must arrive scandalously late and disheveled from my clandestine assignation.”

Malfoy's skin glows, his hair is pulled severely back, and his formal clothing neatly frames the long lines of his body. Only his lips, so much pinker now than you'd expect, hint at anything less than utter propriety. He looks clean and in control and idly, dangerously, alluring.

“You don't look very disheveled,” Harry says. 

“I suppose I could spare another moment,” Malfoy says. “If you wish.” He picks up the last bit of Harry's croissant and pops it into his mouth. “Dishevel me, Potter?”


End file.
